Forum: Public Forum

Yikes! Unless that's (another) very elaborate joke on someone who's away, that's something of a PC bloodbath. I think Elswyn may have been on the brink of retirement, but sad to hear that he's repented his last repentance. Eigan... just when he was starting to use ranged weapons and everything.... certainly a character with an original approach to tactics and only died a little more often than Marcus, who is (alarmingly) apparently in charge.... and now Plot Officer in addition to Health and Safety Officer....

More importantly, sorry also to be losing Nick, Alex and Owen as regular players, but I'm looking forward to meeting James and Paul. I should be able to make it this week, jet lag permitting...

Adam,

As you know, the last sad joke about party wipe-out was your OWN IDEA.
We all opposed it but you insisted Ian wrote something to make our other friends cry.

The session was fun though, as I explained it to Simon the following day, the killing was "fluid", in the sense that I did not try to re-roll high rolls or have some extraneous options to save the party. The PCs fought valiantly according to a doomed strategy. They knew about the 2D8+16 (I think) of damage per hit, yet decided to chance it. My rolls were just average, a couple above 15, a couple below 5, but roughly according to a nice Gaussian distribution overall. The same could be said of the party's rolls, nothing amazing but nothing tragic. Well, there were some comedy moments when Eigan decided to rush down the stairs believing his Acrobatic skills to be good enough. Marcus' Acrobatic skill checks were just as expected: professional; thus he literally flew down the stairs, while Eigan ended up every move face down.

Hopefully you will be back on Wednesday. If you are around, Andrew will introduce his new PC, if not he will play Marcus. David is away so his new Monk will not join until next week.

Marcus is now indeed the Keeper of the Flame, he technically knows everything the others knew about Thassilon and Karzoug, but we may need some in-game reasons to make the other PCs aware of the background story; the background story being: "How to wake up Karzoug? How to prepare his armies for the day when he wakes up? How to restore the realm of Shalast (Nation of Greed)?" well all this for the bad guys you are up against of course.

See you, most of you anyway, on Wednesday,

Laurent,

adam as laurent has said this one is no joke gideon rappled from the bell tower to move around to flank the ogres but when he opened the door and looked down the hallway elswyn and eigan were already excedingly battered by three (yes 3) ogre barbarians with 4 fighters trying to get in the room behind them, so he did what anyother self respecting fighter would do. he shut the door quietly and legged it

James contacted me yesterday aftrenoon just after Laurent left ironically saying that he will be unable to attend this weeks event as he has a family holiday he must part with us for, but assured me he will be turning up to next weeks.

Yes new characters all around it seems, it will either be a disgraced Pathfinder or the timid yet powerful Mystic Theurge Abjurer of party buff to death.

Andrew,

If James is not coming, and if Adam shows up, you should play James' character. This way, we will introduce the two new PCs next week together.
It is either this or I just spoof "The Gamers II" and say: "As you turn around the corner of your hiding place, you notice a man in wizardly robes just standing there..." followed by "Hi! Can I join your party?" and "Sure, why not..."

Just in case I will bring "Red Dragon Inn", as it seems I have at last undeniably mastered the game.

Laurent,

Dear players,

It looks like Fort Rannnick is yours at last!

The last encounter.

As I have mentioned today (Thursday, September 16th) to Ian and Andrew, when dropping by "Vague Connections", I wanted the last Fort Rannick encounter to be "tense" and not the "Oh yes, let's finish this" attitude that the gaming group would have been entitled to after several weeks of fighting Ogres.
The plan I had in mind played out surprisingly well, I wanted one defensive encounter (the party had always been on the attack so far) and one last planned attack encounter, which you decided to have on the ground floor. An infiltration from the upper floors or a fight on the rampart could also have taken place.

At a point the planned tensed encounter came close to a TPK indeed. This time more my fault because I might have sprinkled one too many Ogre at the wrong time. Then again, if Nagri the Mage had made more use of his Phantasmal Killer spells, the Ogres could have dropped at one per round too on bad rolls, hence the density of monsters on the ground floor.
Ogres tend to be cave dwellers too and not really at home in multi-storey buildings, so they would have shunned the upper floors. Enough of them had martial training though and they recognised the importance of holding the fort.

Temporary leadership.

Guideon has managed to be the de facto party leader for two rounds, when Marcus was touching the "Veil" at minus twelve.

All those potions...

Basically as I told you earlier, the two new PCs are going to be knocking on the doors of the fort very soon asking for help. Therefore the CLW bonanza was basically the party finding and raiding all the first aid boxes and cabinet they could find, which made some sense as the fort was more like a home for Rangers always on patrol than just fortifications built to deter an invasion. The rest of the loot has already been handed over.

I will update the game page at some point. I have reset the game calendar vignette to "Nottingham FULL" as a repeat event, so you may now register for next week's event.

Laurent,

Adam,

The "party leader" thing is meant more as an in-game joke of having someone to blame for a disaster.

The so-called natural in-game party leaders would be Paladins or Clerics with a cause. The group so far has never really been led by anyone, Elswyn the half-crazed Cleric never really issued orders to the rest of the party.
At times, the game storyline needs a party leader, like when the Captain of the Guards looks for a band of mercenaries to kick some Goblin's arse. Because Marcus is now the oldest survivor of "the party" (whatever that expression may mean) he shall be that default PC the GM needs to give information to via one NPC or another.

Personaly I do not expect you to "lead" more than I expected Andrew to do so, or would of Ian when Marcus hovers below zero HP. It was just plain funny that Marcus rose through the leadership ladder when you were away.

The gaming group can now be considered to have a core and "two new guys". I thought, and hopefully the rest of the group did so to, that we had cemented the group with Owen and Alex. Sadly they cannot come anymore, so we lost again (after Marie and Nick leaving) our group mechanics. I agree with you that with the new players and the new PCs (from core players), group tactics will have to be reconsidered in order to optimise the enjoyment of the game. As before, I think this will come gradually, and hopefully the two newest additions will be able to carry on playing on Wednesday nights then merge with the group as a whole.

Laurent,

Sounds like I missed some exciting stuff. I think my monk character is complete, I just need to roll my HP infront of the group and have it checked that I haven't done anything painfully wrong. I think it took me about 7-8hours all together to get the mechanics of the character ready, now I just need to think a little bit about his background and how I'm going to play him.

Oh, he also needs a name!

David,

So... one mere x2 critical at 4D8+32 by a raging Ogre Barbarian and there go eight hours of work!

It was exciting in the sense I did not just hand over the fort without a fight. It was also exciting in the sense that I made the combat slightly tenser than planned.

Anyway, Andrew and you should think of an original opening line when joining the party. "Hi, I'm Bob" would be quite underwhelming after the last introduction.

Laurent,

How's this for an original opening line for a Monk....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgyZCgw6kdw

Adam,

Think about the image of EMRPGG!

People are going to assume that we have been playing D&D since the days when private RPG clubs accepted only White gentlemen over the age of 25.

What is frightening is that I remember vaguely hearing that tune on the radio (was it called the wireless at the time?) when I was a kid.

Laurent,

Dear players,

The new edition of the Golarion campaign setting is coming soon:
Relevant entry on the Paizo blog

Although the campaign is Varisia centric, you are encouraged to pre-order your copies at Ama... I mean "Vague Connections".

The game is on as planned.
Hint: Not all encounters need to end with the death of the opposition.

This may save some PC lives tonight.

Laurent,

Dear players,

Session.

Last night's game was again not a standard "bash the monsters get XP" session.
The encounter with "Save the kids and the schoolmarm" written all over it was obviously a "tactical terrain" encounter. I gave double XP for it (double the CR5 for the Giant Moray Eel) because of the purely fantastic acrobatics that happened during the fight. You could have split the XP differently to reward Pacu the Monk and "Sir Marcus, Knight Banneret of the Black Arrows" or the-player-character-formerly-simply-known-as-Marcus (TPCFSKAM in short). Yes, I know, there was another attempt at acrobatics by a drunken Pathfinder. This should be forgotten by history.

The encounter with Black Magga was always going to be difficult to gauge. A Knowledge (The Plane) check would have been preferable and a greater help that just the indication that the party was way over its head about it. So please, try to cover your skill base a bit better in the future. The party could also employ the services of Elric the Mage as an NPC, but at LV8 he might be a tad expensive to have around every day.

I loved the bit when Andrew tried to piss off the GM with a powerful shatter type ring that by definition only works on objects, then mumbling about it for in the end totally forget about the bleeding three-use ring minutes later when the situation ironically - and definitely in an unplanned manner! - just called for it.

The game page has been updated.

Character build and party strategy.

It has been a surprise indeed to realise that the party went from two primary (Mage and Priest) and two secondary (Ranger and Paladin) spellcasters to only one spellcaster (Sorcerer, thus arcane only) in a matter of weeks. While I am not calling for a replacement, I strongly advise that you take this into account. Having the party buy wands (arcane I guess) of buff spells to be used by the Gnomish Sorcerer before an encounter could be a valid strategy indeed. Also the Sorcerer should behave as a support character, the flying across the flooding street with the rope exercise was close to be suicidal. The Fly spell is not a range personal spell after all, so why did Nagri go alone?
Monsters, even those that are scaled for an LV9 party will now pretty often display some SR, and the magical themed ones a hefty amount of SR indeed. Being a Sorcerer with a collection of offensive known spells is of no use if those spells cannot penetrate the innate resistance of the opposition.
Nagri needs to have a theme too. So far the PC is only about casting Maximised Fireball when possible to do so. This is pretty limited as far as character development, thus enjoyment, comes.

Greed.

I loved the fact that Adam did not realise that the 40K in platinum ingots were not there to be used as a mean of reinforcing the mattress in his four poster bed, but to equip the brave members of his adventuring party!

See you next week,

Laurent,

Dear Players,

Sorry to nag you about the registration process, but even if you log in every now and then, could you please click the button on the event page to add yourself to the list of players?

There are several reasons for that, in no particular order:

• A long list of players tells me I can run a game.
• Visitors to our site, who may think about joining, would be more impressed if they see activity. Nominal lists of attendance to games would show that.
• Your fellow players can decide whether or not to attend depending on the likelihood of a game happening on a given day.

As usual, try to post here to keep the thread alive.

See you tonight,

Laurent,

As mentioned last week, I won't be able to make it tonight. I should be back next week, though....

In my absence Marcus can either go with the group to investigate the dam, or stay behind in his nice soft bed... and coordinate disaster relief efforts.

Adam,

Marcus will sacrifice himself, as expected.

Laurent,

Without the support of our Health and Safety Officer, things almost did go horribly wrong.
1 Player death (sorted by a generous donation of the tiny siege weapon, will be paid back in full however )
2 Players under 0 HP (damn lucky stabilise checks)
1 rubbish wand of CLW (never rolled higher than a 2)
Many potions later...

Successful team tatics again.
We need to work on this people otherwise this is going to be a weekly thing...

Andrew,

Party tactics.

It was not that bad. I did not restrain my Ogres. The only cheating I had to do was to call for two re-rolls as luck was definitely not on the players' side yesterday.
However, it is true that the perceived original tactic of drawing the Ogres into the cave sounded good. Too bad it was only perceived to exist by humble me, because people believed they had to rush in for some reasons. Oh it was you!

The PC death and other visits close to the veil of "minus CON total" were partially due to a fireball that should have been "saved for half" by the PCs but was not due to awful dice rolling. So there is a lot of mitigation this time. The Fireball-monsters-and-allies-hoping-for-the-best action was slightly desperate but valid.

Phantasmal saver.

If luck was not with the party, it was with the GM. I think Nagri the Gnome Sorcerer must have tried at least five - if not more - Phantasmal killer spells on Ogres at a DC 19. Ogres are not exactly reknown for amazing Will saves, with my Ogre Fighters and Ogre Barbarian holding a less than impressive +2 Will save value. Amazingly, they always save, or may be once the Fortitude save was called for, which the Ogre succeeded at. Anyway, it never fully worked as my rolls have always been 17 or above as witnessed by all.

Game balance.

The party strength is back at six PCs, so I have gone back to adjusting my monsters' HP total to one and a half times standard. It has worked well in the past and worked fine for the Trolls: they represented a threat but as their CR indicated, they were not there to make you sweat too heavily. Considering the amount of damage dished out by the party, the regeneration was not that helpful. So I shall consider the Ogre's fight (I think these were the last Ogres) a blip. I certainly did not intend for this fight to be that dangerous. As the group cleverly pointed out before the fight: Fighting Ogres in the open is a bad idea. You did not act on this very good self-given advice.

Treasure.

The little baubble found in the Ettin's den is indeed quite nice, valued at 11,000 gp, thus selling for 5,500 gp it was technically a "Same Player Shoot Again" ball or in D&D terms a Raise dead spell with a bit left towards a Restoration spell.
Telas now qualifies for that old D&D 3.0 prestige class: the Blood Mage. I know, the other pre-requisites may be a bit tough for a Fighter/Thief built.

Update.

The game page has been updated.

Laurent,

Without the support of our Health and Safety Officer, things almost did go horribly wrong.

It's now entirely beneath Sir Marcus' dignity and status to be a mere "officer". Now that he's a noble and whatever level we are, he clearly needs a new title. I'm thinking 'Health and Safety Executive'......